Cancer is a worldwide problem. The American Cancer Society estimates that over one half million people will die from cancer in the United States alone in 1999. As such, finding novel compositions and methods for the treatment of cancer is of vital interest. The treatment of cancer falls into three general categories: chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery. Often, therapies are combined since a combination of therapies often increases the probability the cancer will be eradicated as compared to treatment strategies utilizing a single therapy. Most typically, the surgical excision of large tumor masses is followed by chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.
Chemotherapeutic agents can work in a number of ways. For example, chemotherapeutic can work by interfering with cell cycle progression or by generating DNA strand breaks. If the cancer cell is not able to overcome the cell cycle blockage or cell injury caused by the therapeutic compound, the cell will often die via apoptotic mechanisms. The use of a single chemotherapeutic agent in the treatment of cancer, with or without surgery or radiation, has several disadvantages. First, the cells may develop resistance to the chemotherapeutic agent. Such resistance results either in the requirement for higher dosages of the drug and/or the renewed spread of the cancer. Chemotherapeutic agents can be toxic to the patient. Therefore, there is a practical upper limit to the amount that a patient can receive. However, if two chemotherapeutic agents are used in concert, the dosage of any single drug can be lowered. This is beneficial to the patient since using lower levels of chemotherapeutic agents is generally safer for the patient. Additionally, cancer cells are less likely to generate resistance to the combination of drugs as they are to a single drug.
The design of drug combinations for the chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer should be approached with the goals of 1) finding a combination that is synergistic with and not merely additive to the first compound with respect to the elimination of the tumor, and 2) finding a second drug that does not potentiate the toxic effects of the first chemotherapeutic agent. These conditions require a great deal of empirical testing of agents known to have anticancer properties with agents that either may have anticancer properties, or that may augment the first agent in other ways. TMZ is currently employed in chemotherapeutic treatment of certain tumors. It works by dramatically increasing the mutation rate of cells undergoing DNA replication. Such cells, because of the high number of mutations which they have acquired as a result of the treatment with TMZ, are rapidly removed by apoptosis, thereby potentially eliminating the tumor. Some tumor cells are resistant to treatment by TMZ due to deficiencies in the mismatch repair (MMR) system in the cell. A defective MMR system prevents the cell from recognizing O6 mG DNA adducts thereby making the cell resistant to elimination.
Baer et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,731,304, note that the toxicity of temozolomide can be potentiated by agents that inhibit the enzyme O6-alkylguanine DNA alkyltransferase (ATase). In particular, they note that O6-benzylguanine (BG) can enhance the toxicity of temozolomide in certain cell lines that exhibit high levels of ATase (e.g. 300-fold in MAWI cells). However, in other cell lines that exhibit lower levels of ATase (e.g. U373 cells) the effect is significantly less.
Mitchell and Dolan (Cancer Chemother Pharmocol 32:59-63, 1993) note that temozolomide (TMZ) and an analogue, 5-(dimethyltriazeno)imidazole-4-caroxamide (DITC), can be effective in enhancing the anti-tumor effects of 1,3-bis(2-chloroethyl) 1-nitrosourea (BCNU). TMZ and DITC work by depleting cells or tumors of 06-alkylguanine-DNA alkytransferase (AGT). AGT is a DNA repair protein that selectively removes adducts from the 06 position of guanine in DNA by a stoichiometric transfer of the alkyl group to a cysteine moiety. Removal of the alkyl group from the DNA by methylation of the 06 position of the guanine effectively inactivates the AGT. As with the patent referred to above, the disclosed method is limited to specific cells or cancers.
Therefore, what is needed are therapies that utilize the synergistic properties of two or more therapeutic agents for the treatment of cancer that have a broader range of targets or a different range of targets than those combination therapies already known.